MAIZE. RICE. ANIMAL FOOD. 527 



subsistence very much on roots, etc. The principal imple- 

 ment of agriculture seems to have been the hoe, for which 



o 



they often used the shoulder-blade of the bison fixed into a 

 handle of wood. Wild rice also grew abundantly in the 

 shallow lakes and streams of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, 

 Minnesota, as well as in the upper valleys of the Mississippi 

 and Missouri. It was gathered by the women, and formed 

 one of their principal articles of food. They went into the 

 rice-fields in canoes, and bending the stalks in handfuls over 

 the sides of the canoe, beat out the grain with paddles. 



The North American Indians, however, depended mainly 

 on the animal kingdom for their subsistence. They are 

 essentially hunters and fishermen ; the buffalo, the deer, 

 and the salmon supplying them with their principal articles 

 of food The buffaloes were sometimes driven into pounds, 

 sometimes shot on the open prairie with bows and arrows. 

 Fish were speared, caught in weirs, etc., or shot with the bow. 

 The Macaws and Clallums on the Pacific coast sometimes even 

 killed whales. For this purpose they use large barbed harpoons 

 of bone, with a string, and a strong sealskin bag filled with 

 air. This apparatus was used in the same manner as among 

 the Esquimaux (ante, p. 504). Like all carnivorous animals, 

 the Indians alternate between seasons of great plenty and 

 extreme want. Usually game is abundant, and Noka, one of 

 their most celebrated hunters, is said to have killed in one 

 day sixteen elks, four buffaloes, five deer, three bears, one 

 porcupine, and one lynx. This of course was a very excep- 

 tional case. Still there is generally some season of the year 

 when they kill more game than is required for immediate 

 consumption. In this case the surplus is dried and made into 

 pemmican. In winter, however, they are often very short of 

 provisions. Back gives a terrible picture of their sufferings 

 in famine times ;* and Wyeth tells us that the Shoshonees 



* Arctic Land Expedition, pp. 194 226. See also Richardson's 

 Arctic Expedition, vol. ii. p. 96. 



